On Shitbirds

I've been thinking about shitbirds a lot lately.  Not deliberately.  In fact, if I could, in any way, avoid them, I would.  There's just been a veritable army of people popping up lately who want to take a big old shit on society and common decency and then act all flustered when they get called out on it.

Am I talking about anyone in particular?  Yes.  Am I going to name and shame?  No, not in this particular circumstance.  And, incidentally, this post has been planned since before WiHM began, so you're not going to be able to pop over to my social media and backwards engineer who in particular I might be referring to.

What I want to talk about today is not any particular shitbird, just their general behavior.  So picture, if you will, someone who decides to toss a turd into the swimming pool of the internet: it could be a statement that's bigoted, libelous, misogynistic, what have you.  Now here's where our narrative splits into two branches.

Now, I'm a normally socialized human being, or at least I like to think so.  I'm aware that I was born a few decades ago and societal norms have changed.  On the playground I used to regularly say "gay" to mean, quite literally, "stupid."  Add thirty or forty years to me and I'm going to have grown up in a time when "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" was considered some groundbreaking, progressive stuff.  Am I going to slip up and say something ugly online now and then?  Statistically, it seems quite likely.  Hell, comb through the archives of this blog and it probably hasn't been all that terribly long.

So what would I do if somebody called me out for saying something nasty and out-of-fashion?  Well, I'd most likely apologize.  If I was feeling a bit salty that day, I might even bring up my age and say I didn't really mean it that way and it's hard for a leopard to change its spots.  But most likely, unless I thought somebody was being willfully obtuse and nitpicky, I'd probably feel bad and apologize for it.  Or maybe, worst case scenario, ignore it or even delete it out of shame.

But here's the other branch of the narrative.  More and more lately I've been seeing people who toss a bomb, then defend it.  Then the next step is to say that anyone who pointed out that the shitbird tossed a bomb is being overly sensitive.  Then the next step is to say that anyone who disagreed with the statement is a bully.  So these shitbirds double down, triple down, even quadruple down on what adds up to being an ass.

So, setting aside that I know some people are just hopelessly obtuse and narcissistic and will never admit that anything they've done is wrong I'm left to wonder...why?  Why die on the hill of an unpopular statement?  I mean, even if you're nothing but self-serving, you'd think you'd prefer to rescind your unpopular opinion.  If the choice comes down to being thought of as an asshole or not, why wouldn't you prefer not?

Then I found out about Vox Day's book about lying SJWs, which will, strangely enough, remain untitled and unlinked-to here.  Now this book serves as essentially a playbook for a particular strain of right-wing trolls, which, though I have no special love for conservatives in general, I don't care to lump in with the entirety of that political coalition.  And in the book Day outlines this basic plan: toss a bomb, double down on it, insist that anyone who disagrees is overly sensitive, once things get heated insist anyone who disagrees is a bully, then by the end you have a great big flaming dumpster fire of negative press.  But then, all press is good press, right?  And hopefully you've roped in a few detractors more popular than yourself to give you an undeserved signal boost.

So here's my question for you, dear readers.  Does this work?  Is it effective?  Is it desirable?  Is it deliberate?  As I said, I can't swear that everyone who does it is doing so because they're following Day's playbook.  They might just be severely myopic narcissists.  But that being said, are these shitbirds actually getting the attention they so clearly crave in any lasting kind of way?  After going through with this bomb-throwing, do other shitbirds then follow their careers closely?  Does it boost product sales?  Or is it a garbage fire that just needs to be consistently fed?  In a way, are people who call out shitbirds playing into their hands?  Is it best to just ignore their shitty statements?  Or should we go on making a point of calling them out?  Your thoughts in the comment section would be very welcome.